


Hurt

by ruric



Category: Leverage
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-09
Updated: 2010-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes nothing makes the aches go away, but he always helps</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurt

If you habitually use your body as a weapon then you're going to get hurt. 

Eliot accepted years ago this was the price he'd have to pay for the career he's carved out for himself. It's bought him freedom, financial security and allowed him to indulge the dangerous side of himself, the side that needs the adrenalin high of thinking on his feet and the challenge of physical combat against, what often appears to outsiders, to be overwhelming odds. 

If any of them ever asked he'd tell them honestly, he needs it as much as he needs air to breathe. 

He needs the feel of his fist slamming into flesh, the taste of blood on his tongue and the bright flash of an unsheathed blade. It brings him alive in a way nothing else ever has – in the moments before, during and just after a fight the world snaps into a brittle sharp focus that he's never managed to capture in any other way.

He tries not to think too much about where he might've ended up if he'd chosen a different path – after all his philosophy is to live in the present.

But on nights like tonight, crammed into the back of the van on a tedious surveillance job in the middle of a cold Seattle winter, the effect of all those injuries are gradually making themselves known.

His left wrist's never quite been the same since he slightly misjudged a punch taking out a Chechen mercenary (he couldn't help it, he was distracted by four of the guy's friends) and heard bones snap as the man dropped to the ground. He rolls his shoulders to ease the twinge in his right collarbone, cracked when a low level overenthusiastic Vietnamese gangster thought torture might extract information for his boss. 

He could catalog old injuries one by one, as fractures, dislocations, torn tendons, ruptures and skin tightening around old scars come alive under the steadily decreasing temperature.

He shifts again and Alec cuts a narrowed eyed glance his way.

"Stubborn as hell, ain't you?"

Eliot just grunts because really what else is there to say.

Alec's breath huffs out in a long suffering sigh and he scoots his stool closer. Strong fingers, warmed from being wrapped around a coffee cup push Eliot's hair aside. Alec's thumbs bracket the top of Eliot's spine and dig in and muscles which were beginning to lock up release under the steady pressure.

Eliot's not quite sure when Alec learned to read him so well, or even where the hell Alec learned how to do _this_ but he's damn grateful anyway.


End file.
